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Wine drinkers are loathe to consider drinking their favorite vintage out of anything other than glass. There are some aficionados who wouldn’t be caught dead drinking a fine merlot out of a plastic cup. Sales of boxed wine are always fairly strong, but these wines are often considered to be cheaper or of lesser quality.

Across the globe, there are a growing number of winemakers who are trying to turn the traditional notion of the boxed wine on its head. Instead of glass bottles, billions of liters of wine are being sold in cartons that are much easier to package and store.

Tetra Pak, a global packager of wine, pumped 1.7 billion liters of wine into their cartons for retail sale all over the world, according to this article published by BeverageDaily.com. This represents about 7 percent of the world’s entire wine market, and company officials believe that they can reap an even greater share in the coming years.

Packaging of premium brands in Tetra Pak cartons is one way that new markets for this kind of boxed wine could be opened. Brands like Gato Nego and Zumuva are being sold in their regional markets as carton wine, and consumers are starting to take to it. Even some major names in the food industry, such as Jamie Oliver, are supporting the switch from bottle to box.

The wine carton offers a number of advantages that address our world’s current atmosphere of sustainability and environmental awareness. Cartons are much less apt to break than glass and are much lighter in weight, cutting shipping costs. The cartons are made of recyclable material, and are much easier to clean up than glass should the container break.

Although these Tetra Paks will likely be seen in Italy and Spain years before they’ll arrive in America, they represent a very interesting and unique development in an industry noted for its adherence to tradition. Here at Su Vino Winery in Scottsdale AZ, we’re hopeful for a new, sustainable future for the wine industry. Although we bottle our wines, we still have a great inventory of quality whites, reds and more that you can browse on our main website.